15 People Who Failed Before Becoming Famous

The names Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan and Steve Jobs aren't usually associated with failure.

But before these successful super stars made it big in their respective industries, they first failed, were fired, or heard the word "no" countless times.

But they never gave up.

See what 15 game changers had to overcome before becoming famous.

Walt Disney was told a mouse would never work.

Before Walt Disney built the empire he has today, he was fired by a newspaper editor because "he lacked imagination and had no good ideas."

In 1921, Walt formed his first animation company in Kansas City, where he made a deal with a distribution company in New York, in which he would ship them his cartoons and get paid six months down the road. He was forced to dissolve his company and at one point could not pay his rent and reportedly survived by eating dog food.

Also, When Walt first tried to get MGM studios to distribute Mickey Mouse in 1927, he was told that the idea would never work because a giant mouse on the screen would terrify women.

Entrepreneur Walt had a whole slew of bad ideas before coming up with good ones, read about them here.

J.K. Rowling was on welfare.

Before J.K. Rowling had any "Harry Potter" success, the writer was a divorced singled mother on welfare struggling to get by while also attending school and writing a novel.

Luckily, that novel turned into the "Harry Potter" franchise, which has since made Rowling a billionaire as of April 2012.

Oprah Winfrey was told she was "unfit for TV."

At age of 22, the now-TV mogul was fired from her job as a television reporter because she was "unfit for tv."

Winfrey was terminated from her post as co-anchor of the 6 o'clock weekday news on Baltimore's WJZ-TV after the show received low ratings. Winfrey has called it the “first and worst failure of her TV career.”

Winfrey was then demoted to morning TV, where she found her voice and met fellow newbie Gayle King, who would one day become her producer and editor of O, The Oprah Magazine.

Seven years later, Winfrey moved to Chicago, where her self-titled talk show went on to dominate daytime TV for 25 years and ultimately head her own channel, OWN.

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